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The Independent - Top unexpected side hustles to make you spare cash in 2026

Journalist: Marc Shoffman, Freelance

ended 15. December 2025

Hi,

I am looking for suggestions for an Independent Money article aiming to identify unexpected side hustles.

I am keen for suggestions on side hustles that people may not have thought of.

Keep it clean and legal.

Thanks

Marc

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Samuel Mather-Holgate
Managing Director & IFA at Mather and Murray Financial
We come across more and more people doing extra work on top of their main job to bring them in some cash. This Christmas one proving very popular is “Be punched”, a rum punch cocktail and mocktail brand that is seeing a healthy increase in revenue this Christmas as people wish they were somewhere warmer. There’s an alarming amount of clients also taking roles as taxi or delivery drivers. As the amount we buy online increases, this is an easy way to make a bit of extra cash although sometimes your expense make your profit hardly worthwhile.
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Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Vinted resale manager. Someone clears out the house, you do the photos, listings, measurements, posting and buyer messages. They split the profit with you. Decluttering, but make it cash.

Best idea ever: the Life Admin MOT. A monthly check-in where you sort the stuff people never get around to. Calendar tidy-up, renewal dates, password list, important reminders, paperwork, to-do list triage. Like a personal trainer, but for the jobs that ruin your Sunday.

And yes, there are OnlyFans-style side hustles too, and it’s not all adult. I’m hearing people consider oddly soothing ASAR “life admin” content. Handbag or work-bag reset videos. Label-maker marathons, organising a kitchen. Silent desk admin likes sorting receipts and stamping envelopes. Fridge restock rituals. Even satisfying cable untangling with everything neatly labelled and tied. Weirdly bankable.
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Rohit Parmar-Mistry
Founder at Pattrn Data
Ignore 'passive income' gurus. Dropshipping is crushed by ad costs, and 'faceless YouTube' channels face a 99% failure rate as algorithms filter low-effort AI slop. If a guru is selling a course on it, the method is dead.

The smart money for 2026 is Human Verification, profiting where AI fails:

The AI Red Teamer: Don't use AI; get paid to fix it. Platforms like Outlier and Mindrift pay £20-£50/hr for humans to 'red team' AI logic. They need high-level reasoning and domain expertise (law, science), not coding, to stop models hallucinating.

The 'Truth Auditor': With the web full of AI fakes, 'ground truth' is premium. Apps like Shepper and Field Agent pay users to physically visit locations and verify assets or infrastructure actually exist. It is the ultimate anti-AI hustle: proving reality is real because an algorithm cannot leave the server.

The gold rush isn't in generating noise; it's in verifying the truth.